Chantefleurs et Chantefables, Lutoslawski’s penultimate work, was heard as a late and exquisite flowering of lyricism, prompted in part by the French language, in part by the delicately fresh evocations of childhood wonder that he found in Robert Desnos’s poems. It was by no means unheralded, as this thoughtfully compiled disc demonstrates: it has obvious ancestors in the Five Songs to Polish texts that Lutoslawski wrote over 30 years earlier but which have seldom been heard since, no doubt because of their language. They are very beautiful, with gratefully lyrical vocal lines over strikingly evocative orchestral textures (strings, two harps, piano, timpani and percussion) that are complex in technique but lucidly ‘readable’ to the ear. Solveig Kringelborn, who gave the first performance of Chantefleurs et Chantefables under the composer’s direction, sounds just as much at home in Polish as in French.
The two purely instrumental works here are quite as absorbingly coupled. The seven Preludes are played in the order in which they are printed in the score, but for all the disparate material they contain it is obvious that Lutoslawski composed them with great care so that they would make equal but different sense played in any order. I have greatly enjoyed instructing my CD machine to vary the sequence at random, but I find that I prefer the seventh to precede the extended “Fugue” (quotation marks inserted because although it isn’t really a fugue it has the feeling of one). In its ultimately serene unification of extreme diversity – extreme but never baffling, never chaotic – this remarkable work from 1972 is clearly an ancestor of the three Chains that followed in the 1980s. Chain I, for 14 instruments, progresses from a sequence of crisp, lively, at times almost neo-classical ‘events’ to a climax of density (ultimately a 12-note chord) in which until the very last moment every line is clearly distinguishable.
These are quite admirable performances and recordings, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra responding with enthusiasm and warmth to Lutoslawski’s implicit demands that they should play like an ensemble of soloists. Daniel Harding’s love for this music is everywhere apparent in his care for balance, vivid sonority and the sheer range (from eloquent intensity to touching tenderness) of Lutoslawski’s lyricism.'